XZ
by Kuro49
Summary: powered!AU. Raleigh/Yancy. They say that it's the result of Kaiju blue. The Beckets only know that those who don't die come back a little different than the rest.


Written for the kinkmeme prompt: _Raleigh/Yancy, slash, AU, Yancy Lives!, Superpowers. Either recently acquired Kaiju-induced powers or a mutation they've had since birth, please; and they've had to hide them, but people find out and they go on the run. They leave the PPDC thinking it's not safe, and so begins their quasi-road trip across the States-until five years later when Stacker finds them and talks them into going to Hong Kong._

_- Definite R/Y_  
_- Detailed inclusion of their time inland and away from Kaiju attacks/news/etc_  
_- Learning how to control their powers_  
_- Antics_

I am off the marks for quite a few of those things, but this prompt is everything I love (the Becket babes, superpowers, ROADTRIP) so I couldn't leave it alone even if you were holding me back with the force of 2 Jaegers and the threat of a Cat IV. No really, I love roadtrips!fics like it is nobody's business. :D

XXX

**XZ**

XXX

At any rate, the world is going to hell. And the Beckets are no different.

They are in the centre of deadbeat America. The roads gravel and sand grinding beneath the wheels of their car. They have the windows rolled all the way down to dissipate the humid heat that clings to their skin, and every breath they take is heavy in their lungs.

With his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, Yancy is driving with the wind carding through his hair. Raleigh has his eyes closed, Yancy's shades sliding down the bridge of his nose, riding shotgun with his head tilted back. His shirt is pulled up in the heat, exposing lean muscles and a bare chest littered with scars, lighting up in gold with the sun coming down over them.

They have the radio on, music alternating between the static.

In these moments, they don't talk. They don't need to when that familiar weight settles in the back of their minds, not unlike a drift hangover. The resemblance is uncanny. Except it has been years since their last actual drift. It doesn't take a genius to understand that this is not that.

It is something else entirely now that the Becket brothers are out of the Conn-Pod for good.

.

Knifehead doesn't kill them.

(And unlike what they say, what doesn't kill you doesn't always make you stronger either. But this, they have no idea what it is.)

When Gipsy Danger falls, her two pilots stumble out from the torn gap of the Conn-Pod, gripping at each other, and it's all wrong. They are bleeding and it hurts, and then they are falling, like their Jaeger, to their knees on a frozen beach.

Knifehead doesn't kill them.

But they do wake up a little different.

.

They try to pick up girls at the bars by the road, and it leaves them disconcerted, like a part of them is going off in the wrong direction. And even with their heads in a pleasant buzz, the alcohol keeping them at ease, they can feel each other in the back of their heads, like a deadweight seeping warmth through their entire bodies.

They finish each other's sentences as they finish off each other's drinks. So it's no surprise when they end up alone, just the two of them, at the end of the night. Raleigh turns to his brother, smile a little ridiculous, a little lopsided, and asks. "Can we go back now, Yance?"

Yancy tips his head back and downs the remains of Raleigh's drink. Running a hand through his baby brother's hair, he rests his palm on the nape of his neck and drags the other man close. "Let's play drunk chess when we get back, Rals

_That's hardly fair_, Raleigh thinks, _you're not even drunk_.

Yancy laughs, and it's a sound that fills their heads in all the most perfect are pressed all along their sides when they think of their little travel chess set and it is only then that they feel better.

.

_Hey Jaz, hey._

There are tears and it hurts and they are bleeding but it's blue. And it reeks of ammonia in the air. The words sound mangled coming from between his lips but he doesn't let go of her hand and she only knows how to blink back up at him, each breath dragging the strength from her entire body. _You're going to be alright, okay? Listen to me, Jazmine._ He grips her hand tighter and tighter still, and the world is blue. He chokes on a sob, she blinks slower, and it is all pain and shuddering breaths when she tries to speak. _You're going to be just fine_—no, you're not.

It isn't a voice he knows but it echoes loud and thundering in his head.

Something tells him that that voice is not completely wrong.

.

Yancy changes the channel as soon as the news comes on.

Raleigh frowns from his place at the end of the motel bed but doesn't say much more than that. He picks the lint off his sweater, the same one Yancy has been nagging at him to throw away but it's a favourite, and even Yancy can appreciate a favourite when he fists his hands into the same sweater to bodily haul him close for a kiss that is all tongue.

For now though, Raleigh contemplates dinner.

"Yance, what do you want to eat?"

His older brother smiles that smile, _do you even have to ask_, and clicks the television set off all together. "Anything to get the taste of that god awful beer you love out of my mouth."

"Serves you right for taking my beer then."

Yancy rolls his eyes, Raleigh laughs, and it's okay for another day or so when Yancy tosses his younger brother the keys to their car.

.

They wake up to white and a drift that should have been severed.

They bleed bioluminescent blue, and it is just as toxic as when it is coming from the Kaiju. So they run when they hear whispers of a facility, something back on Kodiak Island.

They don't know where they go, but wherever they go, they can't see the ocean, and there is rarely any snow. This suits them just right. They can no longer stand the sight of the ocean or that neon blue against the white. They go where the next exit of the highway takes them.

They go and they don't come back.

.

Yancy hurts himself cutting a sandwich in half and the soft yelp is enough to bring Raleigh to his side. They bleed but it's a different kind of blood that tastes like molten plastic when Raleigh sucks his finger into his mouth. It is an acquired taste that is all consuming, and it gets them kissing.

And they kiss until they can't seem to breathe, until the length of Raleigh's body is buzzing with the feel of being pressed against his brother's.

The blue wrecks wherever Yancy touches, and it smears and burns through the thin white sheets when Raleigh pushes him over the edge, mouth hot over the head of his cock, hands wrapped around the length he can't reach with his mouth. And it's dizzying when he looks up through his lashes and watches Yancy as he comes.

The next day, he starts hearing him in his head even if they aren't in the same room.

.

They don't know what they are.

The cases going unaccounted for when the dead seems to emerge from all that blue still in tact. They don't know what they are. They only know that they aren't wholly human.

So they treat them like Exclusion Zones.

(They call them the XZs.)

.

The Becket brothers see her get taken apart and put back together. They see her, and she is beautiful. The blue like war paint when the waves threaten to knock her to her knees.

That is the extent they allow themselves to see of the war.

Gipsy turns her head to the cameras and it is like she can see them too.

.

_Hey, Jaz, hey._

Their heads are devastatingly calm when the Conn-Pod rips open, like they are standing in the eye of the storm with Gipsy being torn apart around them. Remember when—_she takes their hand, both of theirs_. The contamination is immediate and everything feels like a chemical reaction that burns them from beneath that very first layer of their skin.

Raleigh thinks he may be screaming. Yancy feels like he might be dying.

But all they know is blue.

_Hey, Jaz, hey. You're gonna be okay, baby sis._

There is a sob, they don't know who it belongs to. Or if it's even real.

.

They fuck in the backseat with the radio turned down low when the two of them are stuck in the middle of being miles away from the next county. The humidity of the day cools into a chill that takes the heat from their skin and pools it in the places where they touch.

Yancy takes Raleigh when Raleigh drags Yancy down with two hands clenched into the collar of his shirt. They make short work of their clothes before his fingers are working their way inside of him, filling him up one at a time.

(One, _more_, two, _come on_, and then finally three, a soft gasp that might have been wrapped around _Yance_.)

He fucks him halfway to oblivion with his fingers, kissing the sounds from the flat of his tongue. Raleigh doesn't tell him what he wants. Yancy doesn't give him what he needs. He is looking down at himself through his brother's eyes, and he is beautiful in ways he knows he isn't. Yancy laughs softly against his mouth at that.

Raleigh doesn't tell him what he wants because Yancy already knows. His fingers are slick with spit and lube when he pulls out, and the sense of loss that Raleigh floods into their heads makes them both breathless.

The pull is strong, taut, even more so when he pushes in, the stretch drawing a groan from them both.

And then he is rocking into him with a motion that is slow and sure.

(Yancy doesn't give him what he needs only because there is nothing more to give than what has already been given.)

.

They don't know where to go. But they run. And, they run.

_Oh_, they try to run.

But they never get far.

.

There comes a knock at their door, and it isn't anyone they ever imagine they will see again. Not after five years of being on the road, where they go from motel to motel, never staying long enough to attract attention, never enough to warrant recognition. Smiling at the locals like they don't have a single care in the world, like the world is ending and it has nothing to do with them.

They look like brothers but they act like lovers. But it's more than that, there isn't a word on earth that describes what they are. And Raleigh and Yancy are okay with that too.

.

"You are a hard pair to find." Marshal Pentecost says instead of a greeting, his eyes resting evenly on the slept in bed with the mussed up sheets. "It's been a while."

"Five years, Marshal." Raleigh says, standing by the door, barely dressed aside from a pair of sweatpants that is slipping low over his hips and not giving the man another inch into the room. "And if you haven't figured it out, we aren't exactly looking to be found."

Yancy is still lying between the sheets, an arm thrown over his eyes at the sunlight streaming into the room from the opened door.

"…I figured we aren't your first choice, Marshal." Because while they try their hardest to get away from the news, whispers spread like fires, especially with the time they spend in bars all across America.

"No, you are." Pentecost says, and he is looking at each of them when he says it. "Both of you. You two are the only ones Gipsy Danger hasn't killed, just yet."

Yancy laughs, and it is a sound that resounds in Raleigh's own head. He doesn't smile but it's a near thing when he says, "you know about us, what we've become."

The Marshal nods, slow.

"You can't want us back then, Marshal." Yancy says from the bed, where he has finally sat up. There are bites and lip-shaped bruises that are blossoming into the perfect shade all across his chest, he doesn't try to hide it, not this, or the scars from five years ago. "No one does."

.

_We aren't whole. We're half-breeds, not one or the other, but even then that word doesn't explain what they've become. A mix of human and Kaiju. Hive minds. We see through each other's eyes. And it's confusing until we hone it_ and they do.

.

_Sensei doesn't care about that._

They both turn their heads in her direction. They feel her in their heads first before they can see her and she is metal, red shoes, and a nuclear heart. She is a sharpened blade that cuts through everything before she is standing in the doorway of their motel room. She is Mako Mori, and they feel her in their heads before they ever even meet her.

And when they do, she reminds them of Gipsy. The blue in her hair the same shade as the blood of them and their enemies.

"I imagine them to be different." She says in her native tongue, head quirked towards the Marshal as her lips spread into a slow, sure curve.

"What did you imagine us to be?" Raleigh asks, eyes leveled, carefully cautious. She looks at them when she taps a finger to her temple. "Why don't you see for yourself, Mr. Becket?"

And it is as much validation as it is an invitation. Raleigh stares hard at her and her acceptance is all edge with perfectly disciplined flashes of Onibaba, Tokyo, May 15, 2016, and a carefully construct of blue, blue, _blue_.

It is only then that Yancy Becket laughs again.

"PPDC must be desperate." He stands up, dragging the sheets with him as he runs a hand through his hair.

"The war is coming to an end, Mr. Becket." The Marshal says, and there are lines that haven't been there when the two of them were still in the program. He looks at them and asks, like it's an actual question. Like it's a choice. Like they understand anything that has happened to them. "Where would you rather die here, or in a Jaeger?"

Yancy leans in and Raleigh presses back against him.

The motion is simple but the indication is complex.

Mako Mori smiles with her eyes, knowing before they can voice it, and gives the Marshal a nod.

"Get dressed, Rangers."

The Becket brothers both echo the other, matching smile growing feral and fearless at the thought of all that blue when they reply.

"Yes, sir."

XXX Kuro

*Edit: There is now a sequel to this: AO.


End file.
